Shoutout to the guy who said raspberry pi cooler mods actually work

I was real skeptical about using a raspberry pi heatsink and a tiny 5v fan on my old Dell Latitude. Figured it'd just make noise and maybe drop temps by 2 degrees. But after watching a few builds on a forum I tried a $8 kit from Microcenter in Denver. Dropped my CPU temps by 12C under load with the fan sitting at like 30% speed. Has anyone else tried those little stick-on heatsinks on a laptop's VRM chips?

2 comments

2 Comments

piper_green18d ago

Is it just me or does it feel like half the time the best fixes come from some janky crossover like that? Tbh that whole idea of using cheap pi parts to fix a dying laptop just proves how overpriced most "laptop repair" parts actually are.

danielmartinez18d ago

My buddy Rick tried something similar on an old HP laptop that was thermal throttling like crazy. He got a cheap copper heatsink kit meant for a pi and ziptied a 40mm Noctua fan to the bottom vent. It dropped his temps by about 10 degrees and the thing ran quiet enough he forgot it was even there. He ended up keeping that laptop running for another two years before finally upgrading.